J. L. Alonso-Gómez was born in Vigo, Spain in 1977. He obtained a B.S. degree in 2001 from the University of Vigo and a Ph.D. degree in 2006 from the same university under the supervision of M. Cid. After carrying out postdoctoral work with F. Diederich at ETH Zurich, he moved to Columbia University to work with N. Berova as an invited scientist until late 2009. In 2010 he got an Isidro Parga Pondal position at the University of Vigo where since 2014 he is a Ramón y Cajal researcher.

His focus is on chirality, aiming at controlling the chiroptical responses of systems as independent entities and as collective ordered architectures to enable the design of functional materials, such as logic gates, catalysts, and sensors. Using chiral axes he has developed Up-standing Chiral Architectures (UCAs), All-Carbon Double Helices, Flexible Chiral Shape-Persistent Macrocycles and Covalent Organic Helical Cages. While his original studies in chirality were focused on allenes, the photoinstability presented by these systems motivated the exploration of stable spirobifluorenes (SBFs). After theoretical and experimental demonstration that SBFs are valuable chiral axes for the construction of chiroptical systems, his research is now devoted to the exploration of these stable chiral moieties for the development of tailored systems for chiroptical applications. In order to further understand the chiroptical responses, he has recently analyzed the chiroptical responses of some of the developed systems considering their symmetry. These results will enable a more efficient design of chiroptical systems.J. L. Alonso-Gómez is coordinating the Chiroptical Systems network www.chiroptics.net (this site may be temporally unavailable due to an evaluation process).﻿